One Small Problem
by Molly Myles
Summary: Dean and Castiel confront a witch, and Cas takes a hit for Dean. Both live through the experience, but there's just one small problem; what the hell happened to Cas and how the hell are they gonna fix him? Crack and fluff ensue. No timeline, just a random case featuring the Winchesters and their favourite angel full of silliness and angel feathers. No slash unless you squint.


"O-kay," Sam drawled, unable to keep himself from staring as his eyes tracked the agitated movement of the angel pacing back and forth, "so, you guys wanna run that by me _one _more time?"

"Oh for Pete's sake," Dean grumbled, scrubbing his hands over his face as he leaned forward with his elbows on the table. Sam moved his wide, hazel eyes to his brother momentarily before returning to the angel, dumbfounded and speechless. This one was definitely a first for him, barring that one time with the Antichrist.

"I do not see how endlessly repeating the story will aid the situation," Castiel complained, rolling his eyes as he stalked to the other end of the table again.

"I know, I know, Just..." Sam faltered, shaking his head, "just humor me."

Dean gave a long-suffering sigh and began again. "So, as you know, we went to go question the victim's sister, and..."

The victim in question had been a Mr Victor Ambro, son of the late multi-millionaire William Ambro, inventor of Some Useless Crap ("aerosol salad dressing, Dean." "I don't _care_. You would know something like that, freakin' nerd"). Victor and his sister, Colleen Schneider, were the sole heirs to the estate. The family fortune was split with the kids getting twenty percent each, the rest going to various charities.

Colleen had wanted to sell the family's million-dollar Rancho Cordova home, but Victor was adamant on preserving it. Three days ago, he had been found in the foyer of said home, the coroner's report listing the cause of death as 'accidental fall', but the public report failed to mention that they literally had to scrape him off the marble tile, considering he'd been flattened like a cockroach under a boot.

Sam had gone to check back in with the coroner after gathering details to get a second look at the victim's remains before he got put into the ground, leaving Dean and Cas to interview the sister down in the suburbs of Sacramento. Dean had smelled something off about her the first time they'd stopped by, the way she didn't seem too broken up about the death of her only sibling and had ultimately brushed them off to keep an afternoon appointment with a realtor.

During the second interview, Cas had bluntly asked her if she was recently engaged in the practice of witchcraft, making Dean groan inwardly at the angel's lack of tact and subtlety.

Naturally, everything went to hell in a hand basket after that.

Colleen had flipped out, Dean drew his gun and barked at Cas to subdue her (witch or not, she was still technically human - first step was to try to get her to renounce her evil witchy-ways before icing the bitch). She raised her hand, chanting in some long-dead language at Dean and Castiel had stepped in front of him just as a burst of light filled the room, knocking Dean on his ass and making him see stars.

When Dean had come to his senses, batting away the little tweeting birds flitting obnoxiously around his head, he located his pistol laying a few feet away from his right hand and took a moment to orient himself to what had just happened. Colleen was sprawled across the floor, unconscious or dead, and Cas was nowhere to be seen.

"Cas?" he called, scanning the room for any sign of the missing angel. He re-holstered his gun beneath his Fed jacket, eyes scanning from side to side as he strode forward, intending to check the rest of the house.

"Dean, stop!" Cas's voice called from... somewhere.

Dean froze in his tracks, his eyes moving slowly downward until his gaze fell upon the dark-haired man in the beige trench coat - all six inches of him, complete with feathery, dark brown wings the same shade as his hair protruding from between his shoulders, standing right where Dean was about to put his foot down.

"So," Sam said, shaking his head in disbelief once Dean had finished recounting the tale for the second time, "I guess we know how she killed her brother."

"Yeah, but he was a full-size pancake," Dean argued, running his fingers back through his hair in frustration.

"Maybe the spell wore off when he died?" Sam suggested, grasping at straws, "Or maybe there's a time limit and it'll wear off... did you try, uh, mojoing yourself back to normal?"

Castiel stopped pacing beside Dean's left elbow, giving the younger Winchester a minuscule glare that screamed 'are you _stupid_? Of _course _I tried! I'm a freaking _angel_, you ass', tiny feathers fluffing out as he huffed his annoyance.

"Right, sorry," Sam backed up, chastised.

Cas let out a mournful sigh, resuming his lap of the rough, wooden tabletop. "My Grace has been greatly reduced by the spell," he explained. "As far as I can tell, my 'mojo' is currently limited to my basic angelic perception."

Dean snorted at the air-quotes the angel gave at the term, earning him a pair of icy daggers to the face as Castiel turned, narrowing his eyes at the hunter.

The elder Winchester cleared his throat, putting on his Serious Face. "So, now we just have to figure out how to break the spell and get Fun Size here back to Full Size."

"Well, that sounds like a snap," Sam said sarcastically, "considering you _killed _the _witch_."

"We didn't kill her," Dean protested, "Cas just whammied her unconscious, but he didn't have the mojo to wake her ass back up."

"She was going to step on me," Castiel dead-panned.

Sam groaned, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. "Whatever. Look, you should probably lay low for now, considering you guys put the witness in a coma. I'll head to the library and see what I can dig up online and shoot Garth an email and tomorrow we can head back to the house and look for a grimoire or something."

Dean deflated in his chair, already looking bored out of his mind. "Fine. Pick up some pie on your way back."

Sam rolled his eyes, then proceeded to pack up his laptop and room key, leaving the room.

"Well, Tiny Tim," Dean sighed as he leaned back in his seat, "looks like it's just you and me on lock-down."

* * *

If being a multi-dimensional entity of light and sound roughly the size of a skyscraper stuffed inside a human shell was awkward, then being said entity shrunk to the size of a child's toy was downright claustrophobic and frustrating. Without the benefit of his Grace, he found himself reliant on Dean for the most basic tasks, particularly that of mobility.

When Dean had stuffed him into the inside pocket of his suit jacket to smuggle him out of Colleen Schneider's house, he had felt as though he was going to suffocate. Not to mention the hunter's pocket was lined with condoms, chewing gum, a leaky pen and a flask of whiskey.

The ridiculous wings were a hindrance; a crude manifestation of his celestial form that did nothing but get in the way, sending an uncomfortable twitch through his nerves every time a feather became out-of-place or, like now for example, when Dean was poking and prodding at him in undisguised amusement as he sat on the little sofa in their room at the motel, ignoring the television in favour of aggravating the miniaturized angel perched on the arm of the couch beside him.

"Dean, would you please stop that," he grit out through his teeth as the hunter prodded a finger beneath his right wing, nudging determinedly at it until the angel extended it outward with a grudging sigh.

"Can't help it, Cas, they're kinda cool," Dean offered by way of lame excuse. "How come I can't see 'em when you're you-sized?"

Castiel huffed in annoyance, jerking his wing back, the appendages fluttering indignantly before settling against his back.

"These are not _my _wings," the angel snorted vehemently. "And you cannot perceive them because they are an extension of my true form. If they were to be manifest, your eyes would be burned from their sockets before your mind had time to register their presence."

A grim memory of the psychic, Pamela Barnes, flashed through his mind of the first time Dean had attempted to make contact with Castiel after dragging his sorry ass out of hell. "Okay, but how come sometimes when when you're all mojo'd up I can like, see like a shadow?"

Castiel turned, looking genuinely surprised by the little factoid Dean had thrown at him, as though the news came as a revelation.

"I suppose it is due to the light emitted by the surges in my Grace refracting against the sub-solid form of my wings, creating a negative image."

Dean gave the lilliputian celestial a blank look, much of the explanation going over his head. "O-kay..."

Cas sighed, turning his attention back toward the television, struggling to comprehend the relevance of a time-traveling car and mentally dissecting the improbable physics of a flying skateboard. It seemed irresponsible to him for the old doctor to allow the adolescent access to such a machine in the first place.

* * *

"So," Sam announced as he came back into the motel room hours later, dropping his laptop and a bag of take-out Subway on the table by the door, "Garth hasn't heard of anything like this happening before, but he's gonna ask around. The only lore I could dig up on a spell even similar to this is all unconfirmed legends from South American tribes."

"Awesome," Dean groused, leaning his head against the back of the couch. "So you're basically what you're saying is Trial-Size is stuck like this unless we can wake the witch up and get her to fix him?"

"Or," Sam sighed dejectedly, "until the spell wears off, which who knows how long that could take."

"I do not understand why you feel the need to repeatedly make veiled references to my size," Cas grumbled indignantly, wings ruffling in agitation.

"Hey Cas," Dean said, prodding the tiny angel with his finger, "how long does angel-induced narcolepsy last, anyway?"

Castiel canted his head to the side, contemplating this. "I don't know. The length of time varies from person to person without the effect being manually lifted. I would say, two or three days at most?"

"All right," Sam said, shrugging wide with his hands out to his sides, "so we just hang out for a couple of days, hope it wears off, and if not we talk to Colleen Schneider when she wakes up."

"Awesome," Dean sighed as he slapped his hands down on his knees in exasperation, standing from the sofa and making his way to the table. He eyed the contents of the bag, then narrowed his gaze on his little brother.

Sam raised his hands, rolling his eyes. "I forgot. _Sorry!_ I got you cheesecake cookies instead."

"Cookies, Sammy?" Dean raised an eyebrow.

Sam straightened up, yanking the foot-long sandwiches out of the bag with bitch-face #81 (_if you don't like it go buy your own damned pie)_ firmly in place as he dropped into the chair closest to him. Dean raised his hands in surrender, picking up his double-meatball-double-provolone on white and unwrapping it.

The brothers had just started in on their respective sandwiches when there came a sound like a tiny bird furiously flapping its wings followed by a crash as something landed awkwardly on the table between them. Both stopped chewing and slowly looked down to see Castiel tangled up in the Subway bag, wings flapping determinedly as he tried to disengage himself from the plastic sack.

Dean sighed, dropping his meatball sub back onto the wrapper and plucked the angel out of the tangle, careful not to crush his wings.

"You really need to work on your landings, dude," Dean admonished, setting his vertically-challenged friend on the table top.

Castiel glared wrathfully at him, flushed and panting from exertion as he straightened out his trench coat. "I am not accustomed to needing that particular-" the angel oofed, finding himself knocked back a step as something large and round was thrust in his face, wings flapping as he struggled to retain his balance.

"Sit down and eat a cookie, Cas," Dean suggested around a mouthful of meat and bread.

The diminutive angel braced the cookie up on its side, nearly as tall as he himself was, glaring daggers at the elder Winchester over the relatively enormous sweet. The aforementioned hunter responded to the visual assault by pulling out his phone and snapping a picture, grinning from ear to ear.

Cas opened his mouth to object, then simply let the baked treat down carefully, seating himself on the edge of the table with his legs dangling off the side, back turned to the hunters, tiny wings drooping pitifully at his sides.

Sam scowled at Dean over his sandwich, giving him a reproving glare. Dean arched an eyebrow at his brother, shrugging indignantly. Sam raised his eyebrow back at his brother, tilting his head at the sulking angel. Dean rolled his eyes, shoulders rolling up to his ears as he dropped his sandwich (again) and swallowed, clearing his throat.

"Hey, Cas," he started awkwardly, clearing his throat again, "Look, I uh... I'm sorry man. Just trying to make light of a fucked up situation, y'know?"

Castiel huffed, bowing his head forward. "I'm aware."

"So..." Dean raised an eyebrow, "we good?"

"It's fine, Dean," the angel sighed, "I'm just growing weary of being useless."

Dean glanced at his little brother, who only scowled harder and jerked his head toward their diminutive mutual friend again.

"You're uh, you're not useless, Cas," he murmured, "hell, you saved my life today, probably..."

The angel snorted un-angelically.

A sharp pain exploded in Dean's shin as his brother's foot made contact with it.

"Son of a-" he swore under his breath. "I mean, you definitely saved my ass, Cas. She would'a smoked me if you hadn't been there."

Tiny wings perked up slightly, feathers ruffling. Dean was beginning to get the idea that the feathery appendages told a lot about the otherwise stoic celestial's moods.

"And uh," he murmured, face flushing slightly, "I don't let you hang around just because you're uh, _useful_. I like hangin' out with you and stuff, too."

He ignored the curious eyebrows raise that got from his brother as his last comments seemed to bring the angel out of his funk.

"Thank you, Dean."

* * *

Dean lay on his side, back turned to where he knew the miniature angel sat watching him from the night stand. It was only slightly better than full-size Cas hovering over him or staring across the room at him while he slept, but it was still damned unnerving.

What was keeping Dean awake, however, was the slight shifting of fabric or the periodic rustling of feathers as Cas fidgeted a couple of feet away, apparently restless and agitated due to his condition and subsequent lack of ability to do anything about it.

With a sigh, the hunter rolled over, staring at the tiny celestial through the dark as Sam snored away, all smug and peaceful in his own bed.

"What's up, Cas," Dean sighed quietly, keeping his voice low so as not to disturb the nearby moose. There was just enough light filtering in through the window from the lights in the parking lot to make out the angel's currently awkward position.

Castiel froze, staring back at the hunter. He had one tiny wing stretched out, opposite arm crossing himself as he was apparently massaging his shoulder. Seemingly embarrassed, he snapped his wing back into place beside the other, folding his hands neatly in his lap.

"I am not accustomed to the additional mass, and without the full use of my Grace I am sore and exhausted."

Dean blinked at the little man. He hadn't considered what Cas might be dealing with, not being at full power. He thought back to the Almost Apocalypse, when Cas had been cut off from Heaven and mojo-less, passed out in the back seat of the Impala and griping about every fucking thing. Other than the obvious frustration, Cas hadn't complained much in this particular ordeal.

Without really thinking about what he was doing, he reached over and held his hand out to the angel.

Castiel raised an eyebrow at the hunter, weighing the situation in his mind before cautiously climbing onto the outstretched hand.

Dean set him down on the extra pillow beside his head, gently prodding until Castiel got into a suitable position before gently rubbing between the angel's wings with his index finger. It was a little awkward, but he reasoned that he'd been kind of a dick to the guy for the better part of the day and a small gesture like this wasn't gonna hurt anyone. Cas wasn't going to judge him for it, and Sam was passed out across the room.

The pocket-size celestial tensed at first, not quite grasping what was happening. Dean was touching him, stroking his back and he found the sensation soothing to his sore muscles. He sat facing away from Dean, leaning forward on his knees, mock wings twitching each time the hunter's finger smoothed over a particularly tense area.

Dean thought it was kind of amusing; he'd been fascinated by those tiny little sparrow wings all day, screwing with Cas in jest to cover for his curiosity and desire to touch them. This was working out far better, mutually beneficial. Dean gently grazed across the top of the one on the right, marveling at how soft the feathers were as it stretched out at his touch.

He pulled back abruptly when the left one started flapping erratically, however, lightly stunned by the reaction. Castiel's wings puffed up like a cat with its hackles up and the angel shuddered, giving them a shake and folding them at his back once more.

"The hell was that?" Dean sputtered, hand still hovering above minute winged man.

Castiel ducked his head, seeming embarrassed. "Your touch elicited... an unexpected sensation," the angel explained hesitantly.

Dean felt his face heat up as he jerked his hand back, staring down at his diminutive friend. "I- what!?"

Cas sighed, turning to face the other man. "It felt odd. I suppose you could say that it was similar to the sensation of insects crawling on my skin."

Dean blinked at his friend, then snorted in half suppressed laughter. "So what, you're ticklish?"

Castiel shrugged helplessly.

"All right," Dean chuckled, turning onto his back, "I need to get my four hours. Just... try not to stare at me while I'm sleeping, okay"

"... All right, Dean."

* * *

Dean woke up comfortable, wrapped around something warm and solid, face buried in something soft that smelled faintly of ozone and sun-warmed wood after rain. A general sense of well-being washed over him and he nuzzled deeper into that pliant warmth, pulling the solid, pliant body closer to him and humming contentedly.

"Good morning, Dean," a deep, gravely voice greeted him from somewhere very, very close.

The hunter's eyes snapped open, registering the dark hair that filled his vision and the beige overcoat-clad back he was currently pressed up against and the fact that his arm was wrapped tightly around...

"C-cas?" Dean vociferated, quickly untangling himself from the angel - all six _feet _of him, sans wings - and scooting back, landing on his ass in a tangle of blankets on the floor between the beds.

Sam snorted, jerking his head up with a sleepy "Hn?" at the sudden commotion.

Castiel sat up on the edge of the bed, straightening his trench coat futily before resting his hands in his lap, glancing back at the dazed Winchesters.

"How the hell long have you been back to normal?" Dean bellowed, not quite angry but too stunned to have woken up the way he did to keep a level tone.

"Since approximately five A.M. I attempted to remove myself, but you did not seem to wish me to go, so I stayed. I did not 'stare at you' as you slept."

Dean sputtered, glancing at the clock that read 8:30 on its red digital display. What the hell, so he'd been cuddling with an angel for the last three and a half hours?

Dean groaned, wiping his eyes aggressively in an effort to wipe that knowledge from his mind and ignoring the fact that his heart was fluttering in his chest. "You really could have woken me up, Cas."

Castiel tilted his head, frowning slightly. Sam, putting everything together in his sleep-addled brain, snickered shamelessly at his brother.

"Shut up, Sam," Dean blurted, freeing himself from the blankets and tossing them at his brother's smug little bitch face.

* * *

It turned out that the spell had a twelve-hour timer on it, Castiel returning to his correct size once it had expired. While Dean and Sam went out to breakfast at the attached diner that morning, Cas had disappeared for a short while, returning mysteriously around noon without a word as to where he'd been.

By three, Dean's phone rang, Garth informing him that word had just come through the police wire that their case had closed and that Colleen Schneider had woken from her coma and confessed to the murder of her brother as well as the murder of her deceased husband a few years prior. Dean secretly suspected that Cas had gotten some sort of revenge for her trying to squash him like a bug.

Dean never mentioned the cuddling incident again, but he was more than happy to use the snapshot of Cas with the giant cookie as leverage whenever he attempted to send the angel on a pie run (though secretly, Castiel would have done so for Dean without blackmail).

* * *

**AN: **So yeah, that was utterly silly and cracky...

I saw the prompt from somewhere on Tumblr and decided 'what the hell. I could go for something ridiculous.'

I had actually considered doing something like this in my very first fic, Corpus Verto, but I never found a way to fit it in that didn't make the whole thing seem ridiculous.

I wish I could remember who posted the Tumblr prompt, I'd send it to them. If it was you and you stumbled upon this accidentally, I hope it wasn't too terribly silly and that you enjoyed it.

Sulky Cas (hearts) never pass up an opportunity.


End file.
